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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22884127">red as hate, red as love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/badlifechoices123/pseuds/badlifechoices123'>badlifechoices123</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, M/M, Post-Time Skip</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:22:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>755</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22884127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/badlifechoices123/pseuds/badlifechoices123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Felix has a love-hate relationship with the color red. It involves his worst nightmare and his best friend.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>red as hate, red as love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Felix never really thought of how visceral someone could feel towards a color. It is, after all, a color. It is not a person or a sentient being. You can’t even fight a color. It is simply there, existing according to the light and the darkness. But it exists in places and in people, where he sits and eats, where he walks the streets, where he turns his eyes to look. The color red is there, from his past to his present, and it seems he can’t escape it. He can’t build walls and push it behind iron gates. He can’t hang it up a tree and make sure the knot is tight. He can’t prop it up on a stick and hack at it with a sword. What he can do is to lay on the bed and think and think and wonder, when does he hate the color red and when does he love it. So he starts with the times he hates it:</p>
<ol>
<li>The color of Anette’s sweet strawberries. After she’s badgered him into trying them, he truly can’t comprehend how she’s managed to bring him the sweetest strawberries in Fodlan. He thought of this as revenge from her, because he has started to hum her <em>ham and jam </em>song whenever he sees her in a corridor. He knows he deserves it. After that dreadful experience, his tongue would sting involuntarily whenever he sees strawberries. This is probably the most harmless out of all the reds he hates though.</li>
<li>The crimson red of Empire banners clogging the streets of Fhirdiad. Felix didn’t consider himself faithful to the goddess, but on the day of Dimitri’s trial, he found himself praying not to the goddess of Fodlan, but to the one he looked up to during academy days. <em>He can’t be dead</em>, Felix would whisper, to the rioting streets, to the empty alleys, hoping that they listen wherever they are, the memory of dark hair turned teal, a blank stare. <em>Please, don't let him die</em>, <em>protect him like you always did</em>. The pulsing red of the Sword of the Creator, spine extended, laying enemies to waste, matching the beating of his erratic heart. He prayed in Fhirdiad, under those crimson banners.<br/>
<br/>
</li>
<li>He hates sunsets. Maybe because he hates the idea of running out of time. He is always running out of time. For what, he does not know. He must get stronger, stronger, stronger before the sun sets again and again. He doesn't want to see it sink under the horizon until he is strong enough. He is struck by the image of a glorious sunset, a violent red sky, and a knight silhouetted by that light, carrying the armor of a brother long gone, never to return.<br/>
<br/>
</li>
<li>The color of the blood of his friends on the battlefield, on their clothes and their armor and sticking to his own hair like honey. The blood of his former friends now turned foes, on his blade, on his hands. This blood he knows will never wash away.</li>
</ol><p>The red he hates the most is the one on the boar prince’s face.</p><p> </p><p>There are the shades of red that Felix likes, and it pains him that he might never see them again, because Faerghus is tearing apart, and it takes everything he loved down along with it.</p>
<ol>
<li>The apples his father used to pick for him when he was too small to do so.<br/>
<br/>
</li>
<li>The color of Glenn’s hair tie. Mysteriously, it would often end up tied on Felix’s wrist. No one knows how or why.<br/>
<br/>
</li>
<li>Red autumn leaves. They’re everywhere, he’s seen them around in every autumn in Faerghus, but he thinks the most beautiful ones are those in Gautier’s woods. Ingrid says he’s biased. She might be right, frustratingly.<br/>
<br/>
</li>
<li>As opposed to sunsets, the red rising of the sun heralds a new dawn. A new day, with more time. Blessed silence when most of his classmates are asleep and he gets the training grounds for himself.</li>
</ol><p>Now he turns on his bed, his back to the window where the sun sets. He sees the red that flashes when the sun hits perfectly on Sylvain’s curls. Bright as a flame, deep as the vast red of Gautier woods. This is the color Felix chases when he closes his eyes. This is the color he faces when everywhere he looks red chases after him.</p><p>He is content in making Sylvain the sun he chooses to set down to, rather than the one already setting behind him.</p>
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